Going beyond intent to adopt Blockchain: an analytics approach to understand board member and financial health characteristics

Blockchain is an emerging, but revolutionary technology. Numerous reports suggest that Blockchain use will bring innovation in various processes and convey plentiful competitive benefits for the companies that adopt it. However, reports suggest that without a complete understanding of its usage and implementation, Blockchain could also expose firms to unknown risks and costs. Despite this ambiguity, some firms tend to be leading the charge to embrace this technology, while others appear highly skeptical. From a scholarly standpoint, there is a little rigorous scholarship that has investigated the characteristics of firms that seek to pursue Blockchain. This study provides a literature review regarding Blockchain and fulfills this research gap by applying a data-driven clustering technique to develop analytics models for the longitudinal financial performance of firms exhibiting an intention to adopt Blockchain. We then use a descriptive approach to investigate such companies' board member's characteristics. Key findings suggest that out of 38 firms showing an intent to adopt Blockchains, 23 firms exhibit long-term financial well-being based on Earning Quality and Earnings-per-share Growth. This rate is significantly more in comparison with the pool of publically traded companies. The analysis of board member data for the firms that intended to adopt Blockchains and exhibit long-term financial health demonstrated: (1) higher levels of education among employees, (2) greater longevity at the firm, and (3) larger network size. This study offers data-driven implications for the companies that have demonstrated intent to adopt Blockchain. For being further competitive advantages, such leading organizations may require different decisions or strategic paths for going beyond their initial adoption intent due to inherent variations in their long term financial and board members.